Norm, Virtue and Information: Individual Behaviour and the Just Price in Thomas Aquinas' Summa theologica

This paper aims at putting forward the analytical stake of the few passages that Thomas Aquinas devotes to prices and exchange, mainly in the Summa Theologiae. At first sight, his objective is to enlighten a confessor vis-à-vis his penitent, or the judge in an ecclesiastical tribunal, by way of a group of normative prescriptions, tending to distinguish that which is just in commercial transactions from what is not. But on second thoughts, this objective leads the author to a more complex construction, which involves establishing a referential norm - the just price - to which the transaction price should be compared. It is recalled here that resorting to the just price - the discussion of which chiefly takes place in the commentaries on the Ethics avoids any consideration of individual behaviour. However, this last comes to the forefront when the issue dealt with is to explain the reasons why such a transaction price is equal to, or on the contrary departs from the just price. Thomas Aquinas' treatment of this issue allows one to acknowledge a) that individual behaviour is characterized by virtue or by vice in various informational contexts, and b) that the making of a transaction price is the result of a negotiation process between buyer and seller. In a context of correct information, where the partners are both virtuous, Thomas Aquinas explains why the transaction price is equal to the just price - in the exchange in se - or could differ from it - in the exchange per accidens. But focussing on the exchange in se, both an asymetry of information and the vice of at least one of the partners give rise to deception strategies leading to transaction prices, presented as just by the party who knows it is not, and agreed upon as just by the deceived party. Lastly, the possibility of retaining information during the negotiation process paves the way for the opportunity for the virtuous seller to protect himself against the higher power of negotiation of a possible vicious partner. Although aiming at a different goal, Thomas Aquinas thus provides a complete theory, not only of the just price, but more generally of exchange, in which ethical considerations become decisive in determining transaction prices.Just price; juste prix; medieval economics; pensée économique médiévale; Thomas Aquinas; Thomas d'Aquin; ethics; éthique

Differential Rates and Transaction Costs. A toolkit for Practitioners, accountants and financial economists.

It is our main concern in this paper to make for the following stages: a) Firstly, stock and flow differential rates will be introduced. Secondly, reverse differential rates are expanded on. Then, the transaction costs function will be featured. As long as we proceed with these issues, fully solved examples are supplied. b) Next, we handle direct applications to financial markets securities. Namely, time deposits, zero coupon bonds, foreign currencies. In each case, not only intuitive acquaintance with the subject is given, but foundations and examples as well. The foundations are conveyed by six lemmas which also give computation guidelines to be used in practice. Among the main conclusions we can draw from this research, two of them deserve due attention: First, microstructure, trading and information should be given serious regard because they could have the last word when we attempt to pick out the real winners among market securities. Second, differential and reverse differential rates have a say whenever we want to know about what remains of financial rates of returns after transaction costs.Transaction costs, differential rates, financial assets returns.

The Life (and Death?) of Corporate Waste

At first glance, corporate waste makes no sense. The very definition of waste—a transaction so one-sided that no reasonable business person would enter into it, an act equivalent to gift or “spoliation”—suggests that it would never occur, for what corporation would ever enter into a transaction so absurd? Yet waste claims are regularly made against corporate managers. Respected judges have downplayed waste as a “vestige” and described it as “possibly non-existent,” the Loch Ness monster of corporate law; but waste survives. It is a remnant of ultra vires, a doctrine proclaimed largely dead for the last hundred years—but waste is not dead. It confounds our model of managerial responsibility; after decades in which corporate directors’ and officers’ duties have been focused into the fiduciary duties of care and loyalty, waste sits outside that framework, for historically waste isn’t a fiduciary duty at all. This Article, the first modern survey of the corporate waste doctrine, discusses the origin of corporate waste, documents and explains its survival, and tentatively foresees its demise

The Proposed Financial Transaction Tax – Extraterritorial Effect, Tax Evasion and Other Legal Problems Facing the Proposal

The main topic of this master’s thesis is the proposed EU directive on a financial transaction tax. Ten Member States which want to enact the directive by using enhanced cooperation are currently negotiating the contents of the proposal. This tax would be levied on specific products which are traded on the financial markets. As an example the transaction of stocks would be taxed at a percentage of 0.1 percent, and the transaction of derivatives at a percentage of 0.01 percent. The proposed financial transaction tax would enter into force in said ten countries but it would still have effects on those countries, which are not planning on participating in this taxation system. This is one of the main reasons why this tax has faced a lot of opposition in several European Union countries. The main legal problems the tax is predicted to have are tax evasion, double taxation, and extraterritorial effect. The Commission has stated that it is aiming to reach certain objectives with the financial transaction tax. These objectives are for example to stabilise the financial markets following the financial crisis, and to deter tax evasion. Commission has defended the planning of the financial transaction tax by stating that the tax is likely to reach its objectives. The planning of the financial transaction tax began already in 2011 when the Commission published the first draft of the proposal. Following this the proposal was last amended in 2013, but the participating Member States are currently still negotiating the contents of the proposal. The participating Member States published a statement in December 2015 in which they promised that there will be a decision made about the financial transaction tax by the end of June 2016.Siirretty Doriast

Norm, Virtue and Information: Individual Behaviour and the Just Price in Thomas Aquinas' Summa theologica

International audienceThis paper aims at putting forward the analytical stake of the few passages that Thomas Aquinas devotes to prices and exchange, mainly in the Summa Theologiae. At first sight, his objective is to enlighten a confessor vis-à-vis his penitent, or the judge in an ecclesiastical tribunal, by way of a group of normative prescriptions, tending to distinguish that which is just in commercial transactions from what is not. But on second thoughts, this objective leads the author to a more complex construction, which involves establishing a referential norm - the just price - to which the transaction price should be compared. It is recalled here that resorting to the just price - the discussion of which chiefly takes place in the commentaries on the Ethics avoids any consideration of individual behaviour. However, this last comes to the forefront when the issue dealt with is to explain the reasons why such a transaction price is equal to, or on the contrary departs from the just price. Thomas Aquinas' treatment of this issue allows one to acknowledge a) that individual behaviour is characterized by virtue or by vice in various informational contexts, and b) that the making of a transaction price is the result of a negotiation process between buyer and seller. In a context of correct information, where the partners are both virtuous, Thomas Aquinas explains why the transaction price is equal to the just price - in the exchange in se - or could differ from it - in the exchange per accidens. But focussing on the exchange in se, both an asymetry of information and the vice of at least one of the partners give rise to deception strategies leading to transaction prices, presented as just by the party who knows it is not, and agreed upon as just by the deceived party. Lastly, the possibility of retaining information during the negotiation process paves the way for the opportunity for the virtuous seller to protect himself against the higher power of negotiation of a possible vicious partner. Although aiming at a different goal, Thomas Aquinas thus provides a complete theory, not only of the just price, but more generally of exchange, in which ethical considerations become decisive in determining transaction prices

Micro-aspects of Monetary Policy in Pre-war Japan: Lender of Last Resort and Selection of Banks ( Revised as CARF-F-084(2006): Subsequently published in "Explorations in Economic History", October 2007, v. 44, iss. 4, pp. 657-79. )

The central bank as the Lender of Last Resort (LLR) is faced with a trade off between the stability of the financial system and the "moral hazard" of banks. In this paper we explore how this trade off was dealt with by the Bank of Japan (BOJ) in the pre-war period, and how LLR lending by the BOJ affected the financial system. In particular, this paper focuses on the following two stylized facts of Japanese financial history. First, the BOJ actively intervened in the market as the LLR under the unstable financial system in the 1920s. Second, in this period, the financial market worked well to sort out inefficient banks through failures. In providing an LLR loan, the BOJ adopted the policy of favoring those banks that had an already established transaction relationship with the BOJ. At the same time, the BOJ was selective about which banks it would enter into a transaction relationship with. That is, the BOJ chose the banks it would conduct transactions with based on criteria that included profitability, liquidity, quality of assets, and the personal assets of directors. Furthermore, the BOJ did not hesitate to suspend transaction relationships with those banks whose performance declined. This policy enabled the BOJ to act as the LLR without impairing the function of the market to sort out inefficient banks. Whereas the transaction relationship with the BOJ affected a bank's survivability, the effect was not across the board. That is, the transaction relationship did not increase the survivability of a bank directly, but it increased the influence of profitability and liquidity on survivability, especially in a period of financial crisis. This implies that the BOJ bailed out only those transaction counterparts that were profitable and prudent when the financial system was especially unstable. It is suggested that through concentrating LLR lending on its transaction counterparts, the BOJ could successfully bail out only those banks which were illiquid but solvent, and thereby avoided the moral hazard that the LLR policy might otherwise have incurred.

"Micro-aspects of Monetary Policy in Pre-war Japan: Lender of Last Resort and Selection of Banks"

The central bank as the Lender of Last Resort (LLR) is faced with a trade off between the stability of the financial system and the "moral hazard" of banks. In this paper we explore how this trade off was dealt with by the Bank of Japan (BOJ) in the pre-war period, and how LLR lending by the BOJ affected the financial system. In particular, this paper focuses on the following two stylized facts of Japanese financial history. First, the BOJ actively intervened in the market as the LLR under the unstable financial system in the 1920s. Second, in this period, the financial market worked well to sort out inefficient banks through failures. In providing an LLR loan, the BOJ adopted the policy of favoring those banks that had an already established transaction relationship with the BOJ. At the same time, the BOJ was selective about which banks it would enter into a transaction relationship with. That is, the BOJ chose the banks it would conduct transactions with based on criteria that included profitability, liquidity, quality of assets, and the personal assets of directors. Furthermore, the BOJ did not hesitate to suspend transaction relationships with those banks whose performance declined. This policy enabled the BOJ to act as the LLR without impairing the function of the market to sort out inefficient banks. Whereas the transaction relationship with the BOJ affected a bank's survivability, the effect was not across the board. That is, the transaction relationship did not increase the survivability of a bank directly, but it increased the influence of profitability and liquidity on survivability, especially in a period of financial crisis. This implies that the BOJ bailed out only those transaction counterparts that were profitable and prudent when the financial system was especially unstable. It is suggested that through concentrating LLR lending on its transaction counterparts, the BOJ could successfully bail out only those banks which were illiquid but solvent, and thereby avoided the moral hazard that the LLR policy might otherwise have incurred.

ARPA Whitepaper

We propose a secure computation solution for blockchain networks. The correctness of computation is verifiable even under malicious majority condition using information-theoretic Message Authentication Code (MAC), and the privacy is preserved using Secret-Sharing. With state-of-the-art multiparty computation protocol and a layer2 solution, our privacy-preserving computation guarantees data security on blockchain, cryptographically, while reducing the heavy-lifting computation job to a few nodes. This breakthrough has several implications on the future of decentralized networks. First, secure computation can be used to support Private Smart Contracts, where consensus is reached without exposing the information in the public contract. Second, it enables data to be shared and used in trustless network, without disclosing the raw data during data-at-use, where data ownership and data usage is safely separated. Last but not least, computation and verification processes are separated, which can be perceived as computational sharding, this effectively makes the transaction processing speed linear to the number of participating nodes. Our objective is to deploy our secure computation network as an layer2 solution to any blockchain system. Smart Contracts\cite{smartcontract} will be used as bridge to link the blockchain and computation networks. Additionally, they will be used as verifier to ensure that outsourced computation is completed correctly. In order to achieve this, we first develop a general MPC network with advanced features, such as: 1) Secure Computation, 2) Off-chain Computation, 3) Verifiable Computation, and 4)Support dApps' needs like privacy-preserving data exchange

Governance Structures in Russian manufacturing: assessment using sample survey data

The analysis of governance structures in Russian manufacturing does not only enable exploring the industrial organization and upgrading of companies, but also brings forefront the transaction costs faced by market participants. From this perspective, it is important to examine Russian industries, since models of organizational structure have been developing in Russia only within the last 20 years, under the influence of transaction costs associated with the transition economy. Despite the importance of governance structures within the framework of analysis of markets, competition, and inter-firm cooperation in transition economy, the model of Russian organizational structure has been studied insufficiently. The main objective of this work is to fill the gaps in studies of alternative governance mechanisms in Russian industries, and to review organization and behavior of enterprises as a part of hierarchical, market, and hybrid models. The empirical analysis is based on the data obtained from interviews of Russia’s mid-sized manufacturing enterprises. Preliminary results show that, first, in contrary to expectation, hierarchical governance does not prevail in the manufacturing industries, and second, governance structures affect organization of corporate control, willingness to priceand non-price competition, investment decisions, incentives and possibilities to upgrade and also the assessment of contract risk and contract protection in directions predicted by institutional theory and theory of value chain

Motivation among Muslim in paying Zakat on income at Kota Kinabalu, Sabah / Natasha Noorain binti Kosno

Different with alms (sedeqah), zakat is one of the pillars which every Muslim obligatory to pay it according to person's eligibility whereby alms, matter which been encourage to perform by religious. Parallel with nowadays development, transaction of paying zakat much easier compare to the period of Nabi Muhammad SAW. However, lack of motivation among Muslim in paying zakat shows from the number of people paying zakat. For this research, it focus more on zakat on income which the common transaction among working people. Aim for this study to determine and find out what possibly can makes a person to pay zakat on income. The researcher used survey questionnaire to colle,ct data from potential respondents and from the results, there are four reasons that influence a person to perform zakat on income which are job sector, obligation, reward, and zakat institution. The first reason, obligation with the highest score of mean, 4.83, shows Muslim agreed they responsibility towards religious matter makes them pay their zakat in income. Followed by reward, with 4.68 mean, next 4.53 mean, belongs to zakat institution and last but not least, 4.26 mean by job sector. In other words, to practice zakat on income not only due obligation towards religious alone but job sector that person gets involved with together with zakat institution play important role to enhance the number payer of zakat. Allah says in surah al Baqarah (2:110), "And be steadfast in prayer and regular in charity: And whatever good ye send forth for your souls before you (ye shall find it with God: for God sees Well all that ye do ...